Pupils at Nelson Central School gravitated to a cordoned-off area of the grounds last Wednesday after what appeared to be a meteorite crash-landed from thousands of kilometres above them.
Teachers, disguised as scientists, were at the scene within minutes to protect the students and the school from the mercurial mass, which was still smoking from burning mosquito coils underneath and had, in fact, been collected from teacher Sandra Saywell’s garden.
Rocked by the unusual event before the 9am bell, students were quickly peppering staff with questions, a sign that the space curiosity the stunt set out to evoke had landed well.
The dramatic scene represented the launch of a space odyssey for the Year One and Two students, who will spend the term designing rockets, creating a new planet for humans to live on and exploring forces.
Inspired by the recent Artemis II Moon Mission, Sandra hopes the topic will be loved to the moon and back.
“Space is always pretty exciting, kids get really engaged with it, but this year we just wanted to push that little bit further by encouraging them to become scientists and observe, test, predict, and explain, like scientists do,” Sandra says.
“What we want is the children to realise that they'll need to be some sort of gravity or some sort of suit that would allow them to survive, or a space station, which would then lead them into building the space station out of recycling or Lego.
“They would then need to figure out a way to grow things. So we'll probably go down a route of trying to grow grass seed or something without water, so using other products like orange juice or Coca Cola or Raro.
“We're expecting big things because they are great innovators.”
